intimacy

n. profound closeness; close association; warm friendship; sexual relations; privacy

The meaning of intimacy varies from relationship to relationship, and within a given relationship. Intimacy has more to do with shared moments than sexual interactions. Intimate feelings may be connected or confused with sexual arousal. Intimacy is linked with feelings of closeness, safety, trust and transparency among partners in a collaborative relationship. For intimacy to be sustainable and nourishing it also requires trust, transparency and rituals of connection. It is possible to compete over intimacy but that is likely to be self-defeating. Intimacy requires empathy - the ability to stand in the other's shoes.
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Noun
1. close or warm friendship; "the absence of fences created a mysterious intimacy in which no one knew privacy"
(synonym) familiarity, closeness
(hypernym) friendliness
2. a usually secretive or illicit sexual relationship
(synonym) affair, affaire, liaison, involvement, amour
(hypernym) sexual relationship
3. a feeling of being intimate and belonging together; "their closeness grew as the night wore on"
(synonym) closeness
(hypernym) belonging
(hyponym) togetherness

(n.)
The state of being intimate; close familiarity or association; nearness in friendship.
  

Synonyms and related words:
accord, acquaintance, act of love, addition, adjunct, adultery, affability, affairs, affiliation, affinity, alliance, amiability, aphrodisia, approximation, ass, assemblage, association, balling, bond, carnal knowledge, chumminess, civility, climax, closeness, clubbability, clubbishness, clubbism, cohabitation, coition, coitus, coitus interruptus, combination, commerce, communicativeness, companionability, compatibility, congeniality, congress, connectedness, connection, contiguity, contrariety, copula, copulation, corpus, coupling, courtesy, data, datum, dealings, deduction, diddling, disjunction, experience, expertise, facts, factual base, familiarity, filiation, fondness for society, fornication, friendliness, geniality, gregariousness, homology, hospitality, information, inseparableness, intelligence, intercourse, intimate acquaintance, inwardness, junction, ken, know-how, knowing, knowledge, liaison, link, linkage, linking, lovemaking, making it with, marital relations, marriage act, mateyness, mating, meat, mutual attraction, nearness, onanism, orgasm, ovum, palliness, pareunia, practical knowledge, private knowledge, privity, procreation, propinquity, proximity, rapport, ratio cognoscendi, relatedness, relation, relations, relationship, screwing, self-knowledge, sex, sex act, sexual climax, sexual commerce, sexual congress, sexual intercourse, sexual relations, sexual union, similarity, sleeping with, sociability, sociableness, social grace, sociality, special affinity, sperm, sympathy, technic, technics, technique, tie, tie-in, union, urbanity, venery